


hold me tight or don't hold me at all

by coldho



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Claustrophobia, Gen, also death is a...strong word for this, and technically the genre is hurt/comfort, it IS the buried so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 13:43:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18367181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldho/pseuds/coldho
Summary: jon admits he cares about people. jon lets himself protect them. (buried!jon au post-132)





	hold me tight or don't hold me at all

**Author's Note:**

> I had the CRAZIEST nightmare about buried!jon earlier this week! The funniest part was when Elias Ate It (the Buried's ass) but everything else was sexy sexy horror so kudos Jonny for haunting my every waking and sleeping moment. Please never write an episode with the Dark in it ever again because that may be the one entity nightmare I will not come back from.
> 
> also dumb bitch energy is I forgot to catch up and listen to 133 during my commute today so guess what I'm waiting until Tuesday for.

After the Coffin, after Basira stares at Daisy and cannot meet her eyes, after Melanie and he drag Daisy to the fold-up cots and get water into her, onto her, wiping residue away with grungy washcloths, Jon locks himself in the single-stall. He clutches onto the counter of the sink, legs shaking, and balances his forehead against the mirror.

He isn’t dead. He isn’t dead, and this is the first time one of them has gone head-to-head with an entity and not lost their lives, not lost their humanity. He misses Sasha. He misses Tim. He wishes he had spoken to them more, wishes they could have been something more than archivist and assistants. But even though he wants them back so, so badly, he would never bring them back. Not here.

If he did, he would need somewhere he could keep them safe.

  
-

He leaves the Archives for lunch, sits at a café and dazedly stirs his lukewarm cup of coffee. Melanie had been watching him all week, Basira off Somewhere and Daisy still in bed. She’d grabbed his forearm and looked hard into his face, blunt fingers squirming through his skin.

“Helen says you need to take a breath of fresh air,” Melanie said, sounding like a threat. Jon could hear her, but he was mostly thinking of worms.

So he went to the café across the street, the one where he can see the back entrance to the Institute. The sandwich tastes dry and sandy in his mouth. It sits unpleasantly when he can no longer bring himself to chew.

He feels untethered without them, like he’s floating through the universe, the thin reel that attached him to the Earth long since snapped. Anything could shove him off in a new direction and he wouldn’t be able to control it.

He’s very tired of feeling like this. He’s very tired of needing to sacrifice himself. He just wants to lay down and let their gravity wash over him.

-

He keeps finding himself in the tunnels. He wakes up at night to find himself standing in the bottom-most layers of the Institute, staring up at the ceiling to where he knows his assistants are sleeping. Where his assistants should be sleeping.

They are alive. They are dead.

He knows he can’t sleep here. But he is tired, and he wants to stop fighting. He needs to be with them, needs to do more than watch over them, but he can’t if Basira won’t close her eyes and Melanie won’t stop mourning her anger and Martin won’t stop flaunting a vacuum. So one night, when he can’t stand it anymore, he collapses in the mud, closes his eyes, and lets himself be engulfed.

Above him, he can hear the Institute groan. He can hear the pounds of dust drop from the many books and artifacts of the Institute, shelves contorting with the transfer of weight. The floors and ceilings distort, bend, break, edges reaching to connect. It moans, and it drags a moan from his throat as every part of him is squeezed and torn amidst the dirt.

Melanie is angry but not without understanding. She lets herself be crushed, Helen peeling herself from a slowly cracking door to tuck up against her so they won’t be lost. Daisy can’t help but cry, but she whispers that it’s okay to Jon. To please bring her to him as soon as he can. She can’t do this by herself again.

Basira is the only one that fights, hands ripping holds into the Earth. Her body arches with her shrieks that she was so close, that she could have solved it, so Jon piles onto her, pushes her deeper into the ground until she is calm. Until she is close enough that Daisy can take her ankle and whisper that it’s okay to Basira, too.

His coworkers will come in the morning, take so many steps until they step through Earth that leaps up to clutch at their knees. Beg as he tucks them into him, the tremor of their cries a melody that lulls them even closer. He knows he will welcome them with the secure embrace he has only now been able to give to his assistants. He will not leave any of them to the nothingness alone, not again.

-

Martin remembers seeing Jon across the halls once after the Coffin but before the Collapse. He’d seen the bags under Jon’s eyes, the way they looked less like exhaustion and more like freshly turned dirt weighing down his skin.

Peter had laughed and told him they’d need to go, soon, don’t be mad, Martin, he’ll be even more safe this way. _They’ll_ be even more safe this way.

Who would’ve thought.

So sometime later, Martin with his many eyes and many limbs and bristles of stinging black hair drags Elias behind him to the boarded-up hovel that had once been the Institute. Sinkhole risk, they’ve taken to calling it.

He peels open a window and drags them inside, Elias writhing against his arms. He can see nothing but blackness, a tunnel hard-packed and descending to a sliver somewhere in the near-distance. Martin throws Elias to the ground and finds himself hunching close as he drops to the floor, the sides of the tunnel pressed far to close.

Elias can’t pull himself up anymore. The world rumbles around him, the walls and ceilings and floors buckling under the weight of tunnels as they tear their way to them. He watches it swallow Elias, slowly and steadily making its way across his limbs, torso, head, body crunching and buckling much like the everything that surrounds them, being forced into a limited blackhole of nothing. His blood pools across Martin’s sneakers, but it’s quickly soaked up by the dirt stirring up around his ankles.

Elias is screaming, voice echoing. The echoes bounce back, a thrumming vibration that speaks to years long passed.

_Martin_ , it thrums. His body throbs as everything shakes, dust settling along his shoulders.

“Hello, Jon,” he breathes. The floor creaks under him, dipping slightly. A smile, he thinks.

_Martin, you were not here._

“I know,” he says. “I came back, though. I can be me again.”

_Good_ , it thrums. In front of him, Elias is screaming, fingers writhing as they try to claw ruts into the dirt that has already consumed them.

“Can you take me to them? I’d like to be with you now.”

_I would not let you go, not again,_ it thrums, it assures, and Martin lets himself drop to his knees, body sinking into the desperate hold of the Earth.


End file.
